


Dudley Agonistes

by nnozomi



Series: orchestra'verse [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:05:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dudley and his cousin Harry have always been best friends, even after Harry went off to that magic school. But now each has a secret they're afraid to share with the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dudley Agonistes

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the orchestra'verse, (though not musical, or for that matter very magical) at the end of Harry's sixth year.  
> "Agonistes" means "struggling"; it's not really all that relevant, I just liked the silly juxtaposition.  
> Warning for some mildly homophobic thinking, reflecting the character's ignorance. Hopefully he will eventually learn better.

It was a perfect late-spring evening in Privet Drive. The mumble of the radio drifted up from the open kitchen window—a pop song, and Mum humming off-key along with it while she cooked. The smell of bangers and mash made Dudley’s mouth water. If only Dad would get home so they could eat.

He sprawled on the bed, hearing the springs creak a bit as he moved. Nearly a week off football practice and he was putting on weight already. He’d be miserable the first day back, and that would be soon enough the way his ankle felt—it barely twinged at all now, unless he threw all his weight on it. Carrying too much weight made injuries that much more likely, the PT master had warned him. Just his luck to take after the Dursley side of the family. He ought to be like Harry, who stayed wiry no matter how much he ate.

As if the thought of Harry had summoned it, an owl landed suddenly on the windowsill with a clatter of feathers. In six years, this had become as ordinary as the letter-box flap rustling when the postman came by. (Mum didn’t cry any more at the owls, either, except on Aunt Lily’s birthday.) Dudley heaved himself up, favoring his sore ankle, and went over to fetch the letter off the owl’s leg. “Hang about for an hour or two,” he advised it. “I’ll find you some sausage at dinner, and I can write Harry back after we eat.” Tomorrow was Saturday, after all, he hadn’t got to get any prep done and could write back right away for a change.

Listening to the owl’s meditative hooting (was it trying to sing along with Mum and the radio?), he flopped back onto the bed. He had to admit that the gap between Harry’s letters and his own had been opening up lately. Mostly they just wrote each other the latest sport news—he’d learned more than he would ever need to know about that Quidditch stuff, until he figured he could be the Quidditch correspondent for any number of newspapers, just based on what Harry went on about. Pity he couldn’t see any of Harry’s games up at school, but his cousin had promised to take him to some professional matches once they’d both left.

He always wrote back about the football matches at school, his own and others, and the fortunes of Norwich and the other teams they followed. It was just that lately…of course, Harry would understand about twisting his ankle and being off practice for a while, he was always writing about falling off his broom and breaking all his bones, or whatever…only…

Dudley sighed hugely, startling the owl. He might as well at least read Harry’s letter, maybe there would be some inspiration there.

He was unrolling the paper when he heard Dad’s car pull into the driveway, and the front door banged. “Dudley!” Mum’s voice called. “Tea’s ready!”

“Coming,” he called back, left the letter in the middle of the bedspread, and thudded unevenly down the stairs.

He was sleepy after tea, logy with food (jam roll for afters) and almost forgot he’d promised the owl some sausage, until it hooted raucously at the top of the stairs and he managed to grab a leftover banger and bring it up, avoiding Mum’s eagle eye. While the owl munched happily, Dudley lay on his bed and unrolled Harry’s letter.

_Hullo D. How’s life? Look, I’ve got to tell you something. I figure you might never speak to me again once you’ve heard it, but I’ve got to let somebody know about it and if I can trust anybody with it it’s you._ The writing was more of a scrawl than Harry’s usual Forsyth Primary-trained penmanship. _What it is is, I like blokes. I mean, I don’t like girls. I mean, I’m a poof, at least, I think I am._

Dudley went back and read that one again. With the same thing stated in three different ways, the meaning was hard to miss.

His brain was not signing on to cope with this one. He went on to read the rest of the letter, in hopes that some thinking would kick in at some point while he was reading.

_I know you’ll probably hate me. I haven’t told anyone else, and I definitely haven’t, you know, done anything with anyone. Actually this girl in my House said something that made me catch onto myself, if you follow, only I know you don’t because how could you? So I suppose she knows, and she could have told other people, except most likely she hasn’t because nobody’s been looking at me funny or anything._

He had to read that paragraph again too. Harry wasn’t exactly that bloke with the big nose who wrote love letters for somebody—what was his name, they’d had it for O-Level English Lit last year, not Pinocchio, something like Cinderella only it couldn’t be that, his girlfriend was Roxanne and that was easy to remember because of Roxanne Bailey in their class who’d gotten ragged over that one—anyway, Harry wasn’t exactly him, but he wasn’t usually this incoherent either. Stood to reason, Dudley supposed.

_I really hope you don’t hate me. Or, you know, think I’m a disgusting pervert or something. I sort of do. Think so myself, I mean. Maybe it’s something you can grow out of. Or maybe it’s something you sort of get used to. Honest I don’t know._

Me neither, Dudley thought. He let the letter flutter down onto his chest and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. There was still a hint of light outside, and the room was dim rather than dark. On the windowsill the owl had fallen into a satiated sleep.

He didn’t know what to think, any more than Harry seemed to. Should he be shocked? Well, he was, rather. It was just something that had never crossed his mind. Disgusted? Not specially. If he were to actually see Harry “you know, doing” something with another boy—if Harry had sent one of those magic moving photos!—yeah, that would be plenty disgusted. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to watch his cousin having sex with anyone, boy or girl.

As long as Harry’s still Harry, he concluded vaguely. Apart from that bloke at Assembly last year, and the occasional one on telly, he didn’t know anybody that way inclined. If Harry came home for the summer all dressed in pink or something, or wanted to hug him all the time (ugh), or…or…talked in a high squeaky voice or something?, he’d be pretty upset.

Something felt _familiar_ about this, he realized suddenly. Like he’d been here before. Had Harry told him about all this before and he’d forgotten? No way. No…

Oh. Okay. Yeah. Eleven years old, after the letter came, when Mum sat him and Harry down and explained how Harry wouldn’t be going with him to the Comprehensive next year like they’d planned. They’d been going to take over the under-fourteens… Harry had been even more disappointed about that than Dudley was, but also excited about learning to do magic and going to school where his mum and dad had gone. Dudley had just felt lonely.

Two days after they’d taken Harry to Kings Cross for the first time, he’d come home from his first day in first form at the Comprehensive—big and terrifying and full of big kids, but with a football coach who seemed to like him and lots of his and Harry’s friends from primary school—to  find the kitchen table laid with a full tea. Not just the usual bread and jam but jellies, cream buns, and even cake with hundreds-and-thousands. It wasn’t his birthday or anything, they never did this for the first day of school. Mum sat him down and let him eat his fill, and then asked him if he was really all right with Harry gone.

“Huh? Uh-huh. It would’ve been more fun if he could’ve gone to the Comp with me, but I’m okay.”

“I’m glad.” Mum hadn’t eaten anything herself. “You know, love, when your Aunt Lily went to Harry’s school…I used to be afraid she’d never come back.”

Dudley snorted at that, reaching for one last cream bun. “’S dumb, Mum. Harry lives here, how would he never come back? Where would he go?”

Mum didn’t answer him. “Or that she’d come back completely different, not like my sister Lily any more.”

“But that didn’t happen, right?”

For once, Mum didn’t scold him for speaking with his mouth full. “No, love. She changed, of course, but that was just growing up…and I did too, naturally. Well…never mind then, love. Remember you and Harry are even closer than Lily and I were. You’ll be all right.”

“Of course we will.” Dudley couldn’t fathom what she was talking about. “Harry’s coming back at Christmas, isn’t he? As long as he comes back sometimes and he’s still Harry, what’s the worry?”

Mum smiled at him and patted her eyes a bit and made him eat the last piece of cake.

_As long as he comes back sometimes and he’s still Harry…_ Well, it still held true, didn’t it? Dudley rolled over onto his stomach, hearing the parchment crackle noisily under his weight. If he were still Harry, they’d manage, same as they always had.

The last thing he thought before he fell asleep was, _Now maybe I can manage to tell him about the camera._    

 

The camera had been a hand-me-down when one of his Evans great-uncles died. “You’d best not get rid of that straight off, Pet,” Dad had said, going through Uncle Ed’s things. “Might be worth a bob or two to the right dealer.”

“Can I see it, Mum?” Dudley was there to help haul the boxes.

“If you like. Don’t break it now!”

He didn’t break it. He took it home and wouldn’t let it out of his sight. It was a single-lens reflex, probably new and high-tech when Uncle Ed bought it, old hat standard now. He knew better than to take it to school, but once he’d figured out the tricks to it (photos of one of Harry’s owls, trees in the nearby park, Mum’s nicely set table, Dad snoring on the couch, though he’d had to burn that one in the sink before Dad saw it and thumped him) he took it to the pitch on Saturdays and started shooting football practice (good for picking up on everyone’s bad habits, said the coach). It was no time before going out without the camera around his neck made him feel half-built.

He still had a letter somewhere that Harry had written about his first Quidditch practice at school. _Honest, D, I never thought much about how I was like my parents, apart from how everyone says I’ve got Dad’s hair and Mum’s eyes. Aunt Pet and Uncle V have done all the bringing me up, after all, and even after my school letter came I figured all I’d really got from Mum and Dad was my magic. But the first time they let us really go to town on our brooms? The way it smacked into my hand when I was ready for it, and this sense of just, you know, soaring over everything, just like the way you dream about flying when you’re a kid, you know? And getting down right where the Snitch was without even having to think about it? It all came natural, not like anything I ever did before, and I think I must’ve got that from my dad._

Maybe Harry would understand, Dudley thought doubtfully. If he said that taking photos for him felt like flying was for his cousin? But what if Harry said _photographs? like those poofs who hang around football grounds with those huge cameras dangling from their necks? D, I thought you liked playing football, not ogling._

He couldn’t even claim, like Harry knew, that he came by it honestly. Dad didn’t actually mind him taking pictures—said he might make some money off it in time—but he wasn’t interested in looking at them, either, and he couldn’t care less about cameras and why Uncle Ed’s old one was better than the disposables you could buy at Smiths’.

Uncle Ed hadn’t been a professional photographer or anything like that, either; he’d just liked machines, from what little Mum remembered about him. He’d only had one son, a lot older than Mum, who had gone off to India or somewhere and never come back.

“Why not?” Dudley asked curiously, fiddling with film at the kitchen table while he waited for tea to be ready.

“I couldn’t say. Perhaps he didn’t like England, or he preferred hot weather for his health.” Mum patted her wet hands on her apron and turned back to the stove.

“Was he—y’know—like Harry, or Aunt Lily, do you think?”

“Goodness, love, I shouldn’t think so. Lily would have known, I expect. Do get all that mess off my nice clean table before I dish up!”

“All right, all right. But Mum, about Cousin—what was his name, anyway?”

“Uncle Ed’s boy? Cousin Tim, was it? I never met him, anyway. What have you got him on the brain for?”

“I just wondered. If he’d mind me having Uncle Ed’s camera, or what.”

“Now why would he mind that? That old camera was collecting dust for years before Uncle Ed passed away. No one on our side of the family was ever interested in that sort of thing.” Mum paused, facing away from the table, before she added more quietly. “Me a bit when I was a girl, but that’s all water under the bridge.”

Dudley goggled. “You used to take photos? Mum! Why’d you never tell me?”

“Oh, not photos, all that pressing buttons and setting lenses? You ought to know I’d be a duffer at that, love. I used to draw a bit. Especially just after your aunt went off to school, when I was on my own for a while.” She sighed. “I used to send her silly little pictures I’d drawn, she would send me those funny moving photographs back… Well.”

“Have you still got your drawings?” Dudley demanded, skipping hurriedly over his mother’s brush with emotion.

“Oh no, love. I got rid of all that when I left school. One can’t cling to baby things forever, after all! Now clear off my kitchen table, do. Dad won’t be pleased if he has to wait for his tea. Vernon! Tea’s ready, dear.”

Dudley scooped his armful of film and prints off the table and took them upstairs to his sacred bottom drawer, concerned with getting back down to tea before Dad scoffed the lot.

Later, though, he lay in bed and listened to Mum’s crisp voice saying _one can’t cling to baby things forever…_. Which counted as a baby thing, he wondered, the camera, or playing football?  

 

About a week after the letter from Harry came, it rained. Dudley came home from football practice muddy and miserable, wishing he’d taken advantage of the lousy footing to sprain his ankle again. He couldn’t even take pictures when the weather was this bad: the camera wasn’t waterproof.

Mum made him get changed and washed before she’d let him have tea, and he sat down finally in a terrible mood, overeating and knowing it would only make him feel even worse. Dad was on late shift and Mum was waiting to eat with him, so the table was his alone, and he stuffed his face and made a mess and resented everything, mostly himself. Finished, he shoved his chair back and made ready to lumber upstairs again. It really was a bad day when even food couldn’t do anything for his temper.

“Dudley, love?” Mum called from the sitting room, where she was ironing. “Wait a moment, do. Have you heard from Harry this week?”

“Um…” Caught off balance both physically and mentally, Dudley thumped back down into his chair. “A while back…I guess…”

“Did he sound as if anything was wrong? An owl came while you were at school today—Harry was letting me know when his summer holidays start, but—“ She broke off, and he smelled the sharp hot scent of the iron being tucked into its holder. A moment later, Mum’s face appeared around the doorjamb. “Only, he wrote something like ‘If Dudley doesn’t mind me coming back for the summer.’ You and he haven’t quarreled, have you, love? That’s not like you.”

Dudley looked down at the slick of chip grease on his plate. “What’d you write back to him?”

“Well, what do you think? I told him this is his home, of course he can come back for the summer—as long as he wants to. If you two have had a tiff, you’ll just have to make it up when he arrives.”

“Who said we have?” Dudley growled, hauling himself to his feet again. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Or why you bother asking me, since you’ve already made up your mind.” He thudded his way up the stairs, loud enough to drown out in his ears anything else Mum might have to say. A tiff. Honestly. As if Mum had a clue what was going on.

Not that he didn’t _want_ to see Harry, because he did. But between the camera problem and Harry’s own bombshell, it didn’t look like being the easiest summer vacation either of them would ever spend.

 

In the event, it started out better than it might have been. They didn’t go up to meet Harry at King’s Cross any more, since he’d made strong representations a few years back that only the first and second years got met. Instead, Mum and Dad sent him travel fare before he left Hogwarts, and he took ordinary trains and buses home. So it was early evening, another gorgeous early-summer day, when he let himself in.

Mum had a big spread ready for a welcome tea, of course, and even Dad pounded Harry on the back and told him he’d grown but he was still too scrawny before taking himself off to watch the telly. Harry looked just like usual, a little taller and with new glasses—“broke my old ones in a Quidditch match,” he was explaining to Mum, and suffering her to cluck over him disapprovingly—but not, well, not anything he hadn’t been before.

“Hey, D,” he said, meeting Dudley’s eyes for just a second and then glancing away.

“Hey,” Dudley said.

Mum did the rest, bustling them to the table and pointing out to Harry his favorites. Eating was a help, Dudley always did feel better with something in his stomach. Mum did most of the talking, Harry answering her chatty questions about the year past, nothing to trouble about. Before he knew it, the plates were cleared.

“Go on upstairs, you two, while I wash up,” Mum said briskly. “You’ll want to catch up, I know. Vernon, dear—“ to Dad in the sitting room—“another cup of tea?”

So they went on upstairs, and when Dudley headed for his room Harry followed him. “Hey,” he said again, awkwardly, once the door was shut. “Welcome back.”

“Yeah.” Harry still didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes; he turned half around, fossicked absently with the mess on Dudley’s desk: a couple of mud-flecked football practice schedules, notices from school about breaking-up and marks and use of the grounds over the summer, a battered English Lit text (where did that come from?), a football magazine from last month (the magazines Mum oughtn’t to see lived on the top shelf of the cupboard), a cheap transistor radio Dad had brought home second-hand. Harry was looking at all of them as though they were some kind of exotic artifacts. Well, off at the magic school they probably would be.

“Um, I got—“ Dudley began, at the same time as Harry started “You didn’t—“ They both chuckled uneasily at the colliding words, and fell awkwardly silent.

“Yougotmyletter,” Harry said finally, in a rapid-fire mumble.

“Yeh.” What else to say?

“And you’re not…you don’t…?” He didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, and Dudley wasn’t sure what the exact wording ought to have been either, but he got the gist.

“Um…I mean…I don’t know much about it…don’t want to really…but we’re still, you know, still friends and that?” He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, playing with a frayed bit of quilt. “I mean, I don’t know shit about this kind of thing, Harry, what am I supposed to say?”

“Honest, I don’t know either.” Harry dragged out the desk chair and sat down in it, equally hard. “I mean…y’know…all I’ve figured out is if I’m going to, like, snog someone or something, I’d rather it was a bloke than a girl. I dunno what I’m supposed to do about that.”

“Well…” Dudley cleared his throat. “Find a bloke to snog, I guess?”

Harry made a choking noise. “Just like that?”

“I don’t know, mate, I’m not your local expert on snogging either…” Too true. “And except for, you know, that, you haven’t changed any, have you?”

“Don’t think I’ve changed exactly at all,” Harry muttered. “Think I was always that way, just didn’t notice about it. I mean, when did you figure out you like girls?”

Dudley considered. “Fourth form, I suppose. This girl in my class who wore her skirt a bit short, Ellie Hale…she was gorgeous. All the blokes went for her. Well, maybe not all.”

 “I think it was about the same for me. Honestly. Only I didn’t, like, cop on, ‘cause I didn’t think I was that way.”

“Oh. Um…well, if that’s how it works, then. I mean, if that’s how you are, you might’s well live with it, right?”

Harry looked at him with wondering eyes. “Thanks, D.”

“Huh?”

“Just, you know. Oh—you haven’t said anything to Aunt Pet or Uncle V, have you?”

It was Dudley’s turn to splutter. “Didn’t even occur to me. Did you want me to?”

“Not likely!” Harry protested, then looked slightly ashamed. “I mean…they’d…”

“Yeah, I know. Still, Mum wouldn’t know what to say, but I think she’d cope. I mean, you’re Aunt Lily’s kid, she’d never toss you out. We’d manage. Well…Dad wouldn’t be too thrilled to hear, of course.”

Harry groaned. “I’d be lucky if all he did was throw me out. You wouldn’t tell him, would you?”

“Don’t be bloody stupid.”

“I know he’s helped support me and all that,” Harry went on gloomily, “but I have to say I’ve wondered from time to time, well, what Aunt Pet sees in him. You know?”

“Well, he’s got a steady wage. He’s been at the works for ever now and they’d never fire him, so Mum’s not got to worry about money—Gran and Grandad Evans were always hard up, she says.”

Harry nodded. “She told me once that one reason they didn’t kick up a fuss about my mum going to Hogwarts was it was free.”

“Right, and that’s why _my_ mum left school as soon as she could and went to work. So him being a good earner was a big help. Also, well, he really does love Mum.” Dudley scratched his head, slightly embarrassed. “Worships the ground she walks on.”

“Thinks the sun shines out of her arse, you mean,” Harry corrected, and they both snorted with giggles until Harry leaned over and elbowed his cousin in the gut.

“Oof. Gerroff.” Dudley punched him in the shoulder. “Honest, though…I’m glad you told me.”

“Well…I almost didn’t…but, you know, you’re still my best mate, you didn’t stop wanting to know me after I went to Hogwarts or anything. Aunt Pet said that happened to Mum with some of her friends. So I figured I might as well take the risk.”

“We had a talk about it at school,” Dudley remembered. “All about discrimination and accepting differences and that, and how you oughtn’t to say ‘poof’ or ‘nancy’ or whatever.”

“Yeah? What’re you supposed to say, then?”

“Well, ‘gay,’ I guess. Some sixth-form bloke from another school came and talked to us about being gay and proud of it and all.”

“Gay. Huh…I can’t imagine Hogwarts doing anything like that. We’re usually too busy worrying about if someone said Mudblood.”

“Said…what? Muddle?”

“Oh bugger, I never wrote you about that one? No, s’pose not, why would I bother? It’s just a nasty word for Muggle-born—a wizard or witch that’s got Muggle parents, you know, non-magical. Like my mum.”

Dudley frowned, processing. “Do all these, whatsit, Muddleborn—“

“Muggleborn!”

“Muggle-born, then, do they all look different or something? I mean, I know Aunt Lily had red hair like our gran, do all Mug…whatevers have red hair, then?”

Harry spluttered. “Not even close. They don’t look any different—I mean, Mum was redheaded like you say, but there’s a whole family of redheaded purebloods at school. And there’s a couple of Muggle-born girls in my house, one’s mixed-race, you know, part black, and one’s super blond, even blonder than you are.” Dudley grunted. “It’s just about who your parents were. Or what they were, I guess.”

Dudley thought this over, and boggled. “You magic blokes must have an _awful_ lot of time on your hands.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, I mean…race prejudice and that, people go from how someone looks, innit? Or what’s it called, people beating up on, you know, blokes like you, that’s about how you act, right?”

“Well…”

“But this thing about who your parents were, when you can’t even tell by looking? You lot must sit around every night bringing your family trees up to date, or something. How can you keep it straight?”

Harry blinked, clearly taken aback by this one, and after a moment chortled out loud. “Maybe that’s what Malfoy and his Slytherin pals spend their time at after all. Wouldn’t put it past him. I don’t know, D, when you put it like that it does sound awful odd.”

“Well, I suppose everyone’s got their funny little ways,” Dudley shrugged, imitating his mother and making Harry giggle. “Look at Dad—he thinks a lot of the Pakistani blokes he’s on shift with, but he won’t even talk to the Irish ones. Says they’re all drunken and useless.”

“That can’t be right,” Harry objected. “One of my housemates is Irish, you know, one of our Chasers, I wrote you last month about how he got this bloody magnificent goal past the Ravenclaw Keeper…well, anyway, he’s a good bloke, totally ordinary. Goes to mass every Sunday, even.”

Dudley shrugged. “Dad’s got his own ideas about things. You know how he is.” There was something else on his mind. He was pretty sure he shouldn’t ask, but he did anyway, just to get all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. He was like Mum that way. “Listen, while we’re talking about this…you didn’t ever, right…you know…about me?”

Harry looked puzzled for a second, and then grinned and shook his head. “No way. I couldn’t.”

Dudley had to swallow, even though he knew he’d asked for it, and it wasn’t as if he’d have been happy to get the other answer, either. “Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, right. A whale like me, who would?” Even if he didn’t have this habit of putting on extra pounds at the drop of a hat, he knew he had Dad’s face and looked pretty much—he ‘d heard this on telly a while back—like the back end of a Buick.

But Harry was staring at him. “D, come on, are you kidding? You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean—bloody hell, you’re my brother. As good as. Wouldn’t matter if you were ugly as a troll or fit as Cedric Diggory, I couldn’t—“

“Who?”

“Oh—this bloke at school,” Harry mumbled, looking everywhere but at Dudley. “Left a couple years ago. Nobody.”

“You’re blushing, you really are,” Dudley discovered, delighted. “You fancied him, didn’t you?”

“Shut it, D, seriously, or I’ll shut it for you.”

“Yup, I’m trembling. So was he really good-looking?”

“Like you care,” Harry snorted, still a bit redder than normal. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’ve got this idea nobody could fancy you. Sure, you could lose a bit of weight, but lots of girls like hefty blokes.”

“Oh yeah? Like who?”

“Like one of those girls from your school that we saw at that football match last summer, remember? There was one who couldn’t take her eyes off you the whole time.”

“Never!”

“Scout’s honor,” a phrase from their childhood that made them both snort. “Don’t remember her name. Sort of dirty blond hair, freckles, big…you know…”

“Tracts of land,” Dudley supplied automatically, quoting a joke popular last year at school, only to get a look of confusion from Harry. “Never mind, I get the point. Hey, I thought you weren’t, um, that you didn’t notice that sort of thing really?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Hers were, well, hard to miss. Anyway, you’d see if a bloke had big muscles or whatever, wouldn’t you? Even if you weren’t interested.”

“Suppose so.” Dudley thought of his camera; the way lately the football players at school had started to look less like _fast runner but terrible ball-handler_ or _good with headers_ and more like _look at that angle of body and ground_ or _great expression when he misses a shot_. What about photographing girls? He was definitely a “big…you know…” man himself, but through the camera’s eye there might be something to that little skinny dark girl in the next class who danced, or the explosion of color that was the Indian girls in their salwar kameez and jeans, or…

“Hey, D.” Harry was grinning. “So what’s her name?”

“Huh?”

“The girl you’ve been staring into space at for five minutes. The one we were just talking about, dimwit.”

“No. I mean…if it’s the girl I think you’re talking about, her name’s Medi Richards, she’s in Upper 5A, but that’s not what I was thinking about. Thing is…y’know…the thing is, Harry, there’s this thing I haven’t told you about either.” He saw Harry’s eyebrows go up behind his glasses. “I mean, I like girls, it’s not that. Look…” He ran out of words and heaved himself up off the bed, going over to his desk to open the sacred bottom drawer, the one Mum knew not to touch when she was cleaning (“although Dudley Aster Dursley, if I _ever_ find you’ve kept anything in there that might _smell_ …”).

Nothing that smelled, except the faint, almost undetectable, _delicious_ scent of color film. Unused film capsules. Negatives and developed photos, all neatly filed away in no-nonsense albums (the old bloke at the developer’s had started giving him discounts). And the camera itself, in its soft old case, on top of everything.

He took that out first, and set it gently on the bed by the pillow—just so he could get at the other stuff, but then it also seemed important, somehow, to start with the camera itself.

Harry ran a finger idly across the case, and Dudley felt his whole body tense in spite of himself. He bit his tongue on a demand in Dad’s voice to _keep your bloody hands off_.

“An old camera? Where’d you get that?”

“Belonged to my—our—uncle Ed,” and he could hear the tension stringing up his voice. “Mine now. It’s a single-lens reflex, a Leica.” He knew that wouldn’t mean anything to Harry. “Anyway, leave the camera be and look at this.”

It was what he thought of privately as the “best of” album, his favorite photographs so far carefully compiled in one place. He sat down again next to Harry and put the album on his cousin’s lap.

Harry turned the pages curiously. Dudley knew each image as it floated by. A pink blossom drifting across a rainpuddle (from one of the planters full of petunias Dad had bought Mum for her fortieth birthday last year). The church on the common, outlined against a cloudy, threatening sky. A jar of marmalade on the breakfast table, with the morning sun making it glow. Two fiftyish blokes from Dad’s shift at the works, laughing and jabbing mock-boxers’ fists at each other as they walked home. One of Harry’s owls on the windowsill, absorbed in preening itself. Robinson from the football team kicking the ball high, and Hakim in goal leaping to block it… .

Harry had been turning the pages more and more slowly, and at this one he stopped, contemplating. “This is _brilliant_ ,” he said finally.

Dudley let his breath out carefully. “Yeah. Rob was having a great practice, and Mo’s our best goalkeeper by a long way.” He didn’t say what he liked about the picture, the way the clean-drawn lines of motion flowed from Robinson to Hakim, cut across by the graceful arc of the ball itself.

“Yeah, but it almost looks like—well, like one of our photographs. I keep expecting them to start moving. Muggle—I mean, non-magical pictures just look frozen to me these days, but this one—“ Harry shook his head. As if he’d suddenly realized it, he added, “D, did _you_ take this?”

“Well. Yeah. All these.” Dudley wasn’t sure whether the heat in his face and down the back of his neck was embarrassment or pride.

“Wow.” Harry looked down at the album again, flipped pages at random, lingered here and there. Dudley’s eyes followed his cousin’s hands, compulsively. _That’s the first one I took I really liked—that’s from that day I took the train up to London and wandered around with the camera—that’s the one from football practice that I told McCrae I wouldn’t keep—that’s the one…_

“How long have you been doing this?” Harry asked finally.

“A few months, I guess. Since after we got Uncle Ed’s things.”

“Why didn’t you, like, owl me about it? I mean, you must’ve been spending hours on this.”

“Dunno.” Dudley bit his tongue, moved the album from Harry’s knees to his own. “S’pose I figured you’d think it was…well…a bit sissy.”

Harry’s head jerked up, and they looked at each other, and then away, and then both laughed a bit shamefacedly. “S’pose I’m one to talk,” Harry said, his voice wavering with laughter. “Wish you’d told me.”

“Wish I had,” and the next words came almost as easily. “I’ve been thinking, I might quit the football team and just concentrate on taking more pictures. I mean, I was all right back when you were around, in primary school, but I’m too heavy to be much use now, and I’m not like you and your Quidditch stuff, like, really gifted at it or anything. They don’t really need me on the team anyway, and the coach says it’s useful to have the photos, so…”

“Hey, D.” Harry patted his shoulder lightly. “Calm down. You’re babbling.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. Take it easy. If you can take more photos like this, I reckon you’ve got a career ahead of you as a match photographer.”

“That would be…so bloody brilliant.” Dudley was quiet for a moment, just imagining. Not that he wanted to take _only_ football photos, but… .

Harry’s eyes were equally dreamy. “I wish you could come up to school and take some photos of our Quidditch matches. Maybe if I can get onto one of the pro teams after I leave…”

Dudley chewed absently on a knuckle, wondering about taking photographs of people in flight. You’d have to be careful with the angle on a sunny day, not to lose all the details against the sun…although the right kind of silhouette could be a pretty neat effect too…maybe if you… “Ow! What was that for?”

Harry, who had just socked him lightly in the shoulder, was grinning. “Now I _know_ you weren’t thinking about girls before—not just about girls, I mean. D, you should see the look on your face. You absolutely love this stuff, don’t you?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Dudley snarled, embarrassed and confused.

“Nothing. Honest. I think you’re bloody lucky. Go for it.”

“Was going to even without you telling me,” he returned, not actually sure that was true. “And, you too, mate. You know?”

His renewed look of embarrassment apparently clued Harry in. “You mean…what I wrote you about, all that stuff?”

“Sure.”

“It’s not the same, you know.”

“Didn’t say it was. But, you know. I quit the football team, you find a bloke to snog, we both get ready for whatever’s coming next.”

“You ask out what’s her face, the girl with the big ones, and I start trying out for professional Quidditch,” Harry added ambitiously. “Sounds like a plan.”

Dudley grinned. “Listen, back when we played football in primary school, no one could beat the pair of us when we played as a team. I’m all for it.”

Harry slapped him on the back, and they sprawled across the bed and relaxed, both for the first time in weeks, into the thought of summer vacation and the pleasure of secrets well shared.


End file.
